SEQUIM — Elementary school students who lost their school to a wildfire last year on Maui celebrated the opening of a new playground set, thanks in part to a Sequim resident.
Danielle Patterson, co-owner of Allplay Systems in Sequim, traveled to Lahaina, Hawaii, where school and state officials dedicated playground structures at the King Kamehameha III Elementary School temporary campus on Aug. 13.
Patterson, a partner with Berliner Playground Equipment, has led installations of more than 100 playgrounds in Hawaii through the state’s Department of Education since 2016. In talking to her contacts, she sought how to help following the devastating August 2023 fires.
Temporary classrooms for King Kamehameha III Elementary School were built by the Army Corps of Engineers to accommodate students for three to five years, but they didn’t include a playground, she said.
“We wanted to bring that sense of normalcy and fun and play,” Patterson said.
“We knew it was a temporary location … and the only way a playground was going to happen was with a donation.”
Patterson said state education officials welcomed a discount but didn’t expect “something of the magnitude they received.”
She coordinated with Berliner and other partners to donate the Wagga Wagga play structure, the first installed in the world, valued at nearly $270,000, including freight expenses.
A second structure donated from Playworld Systems was valued at $60,000, with freight costing $10,000.
Maui United Way and the Public Schools Hawaii Foundation funded construction, and Hawaii 3R’s facilitated the structures’ donations.
Patterson said the Wagga Wagga structure, named after a city in Australia, is compact but has a lot of volume with three levels, and horizontal and vertical climbing. Panels are punched with a wave pattern to mimic the ocean.
She visited the school site three times this year. First for the initial site visit in February, then to observe construction in June and finally for the dedication in August.
“My first time to Lahaina was very sad,” Patterson said.
“I compare it to Arlington National Cemetery where you get that feeling of all that loss. It was just devastating.”
But she feels the playground will help bring some happiness to Lahaina’s children.
“To have it only be about joy, and hear them squeal and be normal kids was pretty cool,” Patterson said.
She started in the playground field by successfully fundraising with friends to build the blue and yellow playground at Helen Haller Elementary in Sequim in 2005.
Afterward, she was recruited to work for a playground firm before starting Allplay Systems. Patterson designs and installs playground equipment, safety surfaces, athletic equipment, bleachers/shelters and more in Washington state, Oregon, Hawaii and northern Idaho.
In September, she’ll travel to O’ahu to do a site visit before construction begins, and she’ll return to ensure it’s OK to play on.
Her company’s tagline is “Our work is all play.”
For more information, visit allplaysystems.com.
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Matthew Nash is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. Reach him at matthew.nash@sequimgazette.com.
